NASA, Other

And so it begins

The good news was that President Obama mentioned NASA in a speech. The bad news: the speech was about the impending federal government shutdown and its effects on various agencies. “NASA will shut down almost entirely,” he said in a speech late Monday afternoon, after noting that many essential government functions will continue, “but Mission Control will remain open to support the astronauts serving on the Space Station.”

As noted here Friday, only a few hundred of NASA’s employees will remain on the job today, working mission control for the ISS and operating other spacecraft. Most other NASA activities will come to a halt, including the agency’s extensive public outreach work. As NASA’s History Office noted on Twitter early Tuesday:

NASA kicked off yesterday an “Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop” workshop in Houston, selecting almost 100 participants from the more than 400 who submitted papers to the agency’s request for information earlier this summer asking for ideas on how to carry out the agency’s asteroid initiative. The workshop was scheduled to continue today and tomorrow, but according to one participant, the rest of the workshop has been cancelled because of the shutdown.

The effects of the shutdown go beyond shuttered Twitter accounts and cancelled symposia. While NASA’s interpretation of shutdown rules allow it to continue operating existing satellites (albeit with skeleton crews and limited, if any, science operations), work on missions under development “will generally cease.” That means, The Planetary Society notes, that preparations for the launch of the MAVEN Mars mission will come to a halt, a month and a half before its scheduled launch. MAVEN’s launch window runs only to early December, so if there is an extended shutdown, it’s possible MAVEN will miss the window and have to wait until the next launch window in early 2016.

The shutdown also has varying impacts for other non-NASA space activities in the military at NOAA, and the FAA. The FAA noted that next week’s meetings of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee will be cancelled if the government is still in shutdown mode by midday on Monday, October 7 (the meetings are October 9 and 10.)

And, if you’re curious, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, run by a private organization, remains open even with most of NASA shut down. However, bus tours of KSC are cancelled.

43 comments to And so it begins

  • Logan Gallaway

    Amount of radicalism in our government has reached critical mass. Only hoping it can go down from here. Also thought of MAVEN missing launch window because of this is rage inducing. All the hard work and time put into launch prep wasted for basically nothing.

    • amightywind

      To which radicals do you refer? The ones who brought us socialized medicine, trillion dollar deficits, record unemployment, youth despair?

      Also thought of MAVEN missing launch window because of this is rage inducing.

      Mars atmosphere will still be there in 2 years.

      • Vladislaw

        Do you mean the prescription drug bill? Or President Bush’s tax and spend policies?

      • Hiram

        “Mars atmosphere will still be there in 2 years.”

        But the Moon will be 3 inches farther away. Yikes!

      • “Mars atmosphere will still be there in 2 years.”

        Yes, and if you want to pick up the tab for two years of proper clean room storage, feel free…

        (Extended storage well beyond the intended launch time was a factor in the failure of Galileo’s high-gain antenna to fully open, BTW.)

  • Hiram

    One has to be amused about the shutdown in the context of NASA, whose main rationale for existence is what has been termed soft power. That soft power at NASA is expressed in bravery, technological superiority, and science accomplishment. (A very important rationale!) The shutdown expresses to the world a national softness in basic governance and consensus that is positively fluffy. Soft impotence, perhaps? So much for American exceptionalism. We can be exceptional as a nation, I guess, when we flip the lights back on.

    • amightywind

      In the last 5 years that power has indeed grown soft. America is reduced to hitching rides to our own space station with our eternal enemy Russia. The government shutdown is hard power. It is a brute force reminder to the statists that it is the House of Representatives, the people’s house, that controls the nations purse strings.

      • Ferris Valyn

        Did we take the same Government 101 Class? Because I am pretty sure that the House of Reps can’t actually make law (including spending) without the Senate.

        Just sayin….

      • Hiram

        “In the last 5 years that power has indeed grown soft.”

        Government shutdowns have been going on since 1976. Seventeen times since then. It has actually been many years since the last one though, in 1995. One might therefore gather that our partnership with our eternal enemy (the plans for a U.S./Russia partnership on ISS were announced in 1993) has strengthened our government, no?

        This is a brute force reminder to the historically illiterate that life is a little more complicated than it might seem.

      • Coastal Ron

        amightywind said:

        America is reduced to hitching rides to our own space station with our eternal enemy Russia.

        Which is funny, because that started under Bush 43 and you didn’t complain about it then, but since Obama has been trying to get Commercial Crew going – which is NOT a government-owned, government-run entity – you have been against it.

        So apparently you are OK with relying on the Russians when it’s a Republican President doing it, but against a commercial solution for it when it is being promoted by a Democratic President.

        You are hilarious!!!

      • Gregori

        “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”

      • Mader

        “America is reduced to hitching rides to our own space station with our eternal enemy Russia”
        Newsflash for you: Cold War ended quite a while ago.

      • josh

        democrats got more votes. the gop controls the house only because of gerrymandering, i.e. cheating. those pesky facts, eh?
        oh, and the shutdown isn’t hard power, it’s a desperate, suicidal attmept by the extreme right to remain relevant. america will leave them behind soon. demographics are destiny.

  • E.P. Grondine

    They should have moved the workshop to the Marina hotel.

    • Hiram

      As I told you before, the workshop site IS NOT A NASA SITE. Get that through your noggin. Lunar and Planetary Institute, which is hosting the workshop, is run by USRA. The reason the conference is being canceled is because civil servants are not only not being paid, but have been strictly and sternly warned against even volunteering any time during the shutdown. That being the case, they couldn’t attend even if the workshop were being held in a hotel, on the beach or in someones living room. Since participation by NASA civil servants is essential to this effort, both from an organizational and participation perspective, cancellation is the sensible thing to do. Yes, even dumb things require sensible responses.

      You work for the Marina hotel, right?

    • Hiram

      Well, the B612 foundation is doing their own “Asteroid Unconference” in the Hilton (which is what the Marina hotel turned into) to give Synthesis workshop participants-without-a-workshop something to do. So non-NASA people are invited there for a few hours to have a few buy-your-own drinks at the Luna Bar and pretend that they are having a useful meeting while they’re waiting for their planes to depart.

      • E.P. Grondine

        Hi Hiram –

        Funny how that worked out.

        My guess is that the workshop participants will be doing a lot more than having drinks for a few hours. Probably networking with JSC folks as well.

        By the way, Brian May of Queen is onboard with B612, so the entertainment at their small functions is likely to be somewhere the other side of great, and a pro PR/fundraising team as well, plus a whole lot more heavy hitters.

        • Hiram

          If JSC civil servants are “networking” there, there will be hell to pay. Civil servants were given CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS not to act in their capacity as a civil servant. My understanding is that NASA employees are taking these rules very seriously.

          Brian May could sing his tune “We Will Rock You”. That would be appropriate.

          • E.P. Grondine

            Good Morning, Hiram –

            If some astronauts want to meet with some old friends and have some free coffee and healthy snacks, and they happen to be at the Marina, then I doubt if whoever is supposed to give them hell will remember their transgressions once the government is open again. Same thing goes for the “civil servants”.

            Aside from that, I saw where there already was a wiki entry for “un-conference”.

            • Hiram

              No one cares about retired astronauts.

              But according to a NASA lawyer I know, civil servants are not to violate this rule. When they get the book thrown at them, maybe they’ll call you in to tell them what you doubted. You should charge a retainer for your sage advice!

              The wiki entry is a definition for “un-conference”, and I don’t think it makes any distinctions about whether NASA civil service people are at one. The point is, this was a workshop to introduce NASA to ideas about concepts for AARM. If NASA people aren’t there, that makes it kinda hard to do. No NASA workshop report will get produced from such an un-conference. From NASA planning perspectives, it will never have existed.

              It’s constructive for B612 to provide a venue for meeting old friends, but it doesn’t do what the workshop was created to do.

              • E.P. Grondine

                Hi Hiram –

                It would seem to me that the people who you propose would “throw the book” at them are also at home right now. I don’t know how they’ll feel when they get back to work.

                You may as well lighten up, as the ARM is going to go ahead.

                As far as the public not caring about astronauts, personally, I have a feeling that “Howard Wallowitz” will be doing a powerpoint of his “flight” as entertainment at a future ASE.

  • Aberwys

    The MAVEN people are likely happy. They can blame any delay on the government and not the NGIMS repair.

  • I’m among the ranks of the furloughed. I guess Rep. Bill Posey really doesn’t want my vote in 2014.

    • Lawrence

      Slate is now reporting that of all the federal agencies, NASA is the one with the largest fraction of furloughed civil servants — 97%.

      One can’t help interpreting that to mean that of all the federal agencies, what NASA does is the least important to the nation. Most of what NASA does, the nation can do without. Well, at least for a little while.

  • Matt

    A pox on both parties; the ideologues control both, much to the disdain of the political center.

    • josh

      you’re wrong. the republicans are to blame for the shutdown and nobody else. they are using blackmail to get their way when they can’t get what they want through elections (obama won, the dems control the senate and the gop kept control of the house only because of heavily gerrymandered districts, democrats got more votes also there. plus, the supreme court upheld the aca). the extremists in the gop are a serious threat to democracy in the us. this “both parties are the same” bullshit is part of the problem. if you really believe in that you’re ignorant of the facts.

      • Michael Listner

        Let me guess…you’re a Democrat.

        • Coastal Ron

          Or someone who is not a Republican or Democrat, but part of that broad middle called “Independent”.

          Or, and this is a possibility too, a Republican that doesn’t like what his party is doing. And since polls show that even many Republican’s are not happy about the shutdown, this is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

  • E.P. Grondine

    The downselect for the workshop was excellent.
    I wonder what the details are on the scheduling of it.

  • DCSCA

    “NASA will shut down almost entirely,” [President Obama] said in a speech late Monday afternoon”

    Quaint talking point, but for all intents and purposes he he pretty much shuttered the agency when he did a 190 from his campaign position and xhelved constellation. Mr. Obama has no interest in space other than to give it space in a speech to score a talking point.

  • Jaw-dropping editorial in this morning’s Florida Today ripping Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) for helping shut down the government:

    “Posey Gambled With Work Force”

    Workers at Kennedy Space Center endured the shutdown of the Constellation program. They survived thousands of layoffs from the end of the space shuttle program.

    Now, they and their families will suffer from a vote by the very congressman they have trusted for support.

    And that’s just the warmup …

  • Jim Nobles

    Well another day of SLS/Orion workforce standing idle while commercial space marches on.

    • E.P. Grondine

      Good Morning, Jim –

      This shutdown has to end by the middle of October; my estimate is that no one wants to threaten the dollar’s use as the world’s reserve currency.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi all –

    Re: Shutdown and Asteroid Workshop

    Despite Hiram’s vigorous rationalizations, Planetary Defense is different than many other NASA tasks, and besides who scheduled this workshop, another good question is why the exemption clause was not invoked for it:

    “The only exemptions to the shutdown concern “emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,” according to government documents.

    • Hiram

      That’s exactly right, that planetary defense is different than other NASA tasks, which is why NASA really ought not be doing it.

      As to the exemption clause, betcha that far, far more deaths are going to result from other threats deserving exemptions than asteroid impact will. In fact, on the likely timescale of this shutdown, if we were to have identified an asteroid that was going to hit us during the shutdown, there would have been nothing we could have done about it. Just duck, everyone!

      Asteroid threats are not an emergency. It’s just that simple. If they were, you can be sure that NASA would not have been given the job. Hey, we could put flashing lights on the crawler transporter to get traffic out of the way as it speeds down the crawlerway from the VAB.

      • E.P. Grondine

        Hi Hiram –

        You are out of the loop on this one, and apparently you intend to stay that way, quite intentionally. Why?
        Because NASA dealing with the impact hazard would take resources from projects which you are fascinated by.

        Fundamentally, you and I have different estimates of the hazard from impact. For ELE’s, NASA’s old estimate is documented as being 4 times too low.

        For smaller impacts, I wrote a book giving an estimate based on “recent” historical, archaeological, and geological data for the Americas. In our age of armed confrontations, nuclear power plants, and volatile chemical plants, even “small” impacts would have large effects.

        • Hiram

          Well, I don’t know which “loop” you are referring to, but the one your are in is certainly pretty loopy.

          NASA dealing with impact hazards is like NASA fighting terrorists. It isn’t an agency that is built to respond to national (or international) threats. The DOD is, and it has at least as much space systems, tracking, and propulsion hardware and architecture knowledge as NASA does. If the nation decides that it must do so, such that there is a real “emergency”, then take money from NASA if you must and give it to an agency that can do it right. Protection of our planet is vastly more important than what NASA is mostly doing now.

          As to your book, how much did you pay to get it printed? Have you ever written any refereed articles on this in professional journals? It’s not about the estimates from “you and I” for impact hazards. It’s about estimates validated by a consensus accepted authorities. That you consider yourself an accepted authority is no surprise.

          We have a missle-tipped nuclear armada that could quite likely do a lot more damage to the Earth and to it’s inhabitants than any remotely likely asteroid impact. If you want to declare emergencies for the Earth, that would be a good place to start.

  • Not much notice of DARPA’s new space launch vehicle plans, picking up where the Air Force left off. Virgin Galactic looks to get a chunk of change out it…

    From SPACE NEWS website

    DARPA To Start Reusable Launch Vehicle Program

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